Deccan Chargers

Deccan Chargers is the franchise that represents the city of Hyderabad in the Indian Premier League Season 2 - DLF IPL 2009. This year in 2009, the team will be led by Adam Gilchrist and coached by Darren Lehmann, both former Australian Test cricketers. There is no Icon Player for the team.

Owner : Deccan Chronicle

Coach : Darren Lehmann

Captain : Adam Gilchrist

Colours : Midnight Blue and Silver

Home Ground : Hyderabad

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History

The Deccan Chargers franchise is owned by Deccan Chronicle. The media group acquired the franchise from IPL for $107 million on January 24, 2008. It is announced that from 2009 season onwards the team will change its jersey(from beige-black to sparkling silver-blue), logo and also the team will have much more hype in it.

2008 IPL season

Despite the fact that the team was one of the favourites to win the inauguaral edition of the IPL, the team failed to reach the semi-finals. In addition, Andrew Symonds (Deccan's most expensive player) batted only 3 innings before leaving to play for the Australian national team, and team captain Laxman had his season ended by an injury after 6 games. Only 3 Deccan bowlers, R. P. Singh, Pragyan Ojha and Shahid Afridi, took more than 4 wickets in the competition. In this 14 match period, the team went winless at home and only managed 2 wins overall, one against the Mumbai Indians and one against the Chennai Super Kings. They finished at the bottom of the table.

2009 IPL season

After the debacle of 2008, the team management have sacked the entire previous administration(their CEO, Managers), the Captain and the entire Coaching Staff except assistant coach Kanwaljit Singh. They have sacked their CEO J.Kalyankrishnan after one week of the 2008 Season, Coach Robin Singh and later Captain V.V.S.Laxman and replaced them with Tim Wright(later he too resigned after violating Foreigners Act), the former Australian batsman Darren Lehmann and former Australia Wicket-Keeper Adam Gilchrist respectively.

In a low key trading of players, the Deccan Chargers management have placed Shahid Afridi and Herschelle Gibbs up for sale, a direct result of their below par performance during the 2008 season, however no other Franchise owners were interested in acquiring these two players. Due to this the Deccan Chargers management have ceased all tieswith Shahid Afridi, due to a disagreement with former Deccan Chargers captain V.V.S.Laxman. They have also released former India all-rounder Sanjay Bangar. Before the second player auction took place the management signed Queensland all-rounder Ryan Harris owing to a strong recommendation from Coach Darren Lehmann. In the resulting auction the Deccan Chargers franchise acquired two West Indian players, Fidel Edwards for a fee of $150,000, and Dwayne Smith for $100,000.